Beneath the Abbey Wall (39 page)

Fifteen minutes later, DI Dunne and WPC Ann McPherson were shown in to the meeting room.

Eilidh looked at Rob. He could see her putting on her brave face, the one she must have learned as a little girl waiting for the wrath of her father to descend on her, beating her for some insignificant childish misdemeanor that he would turn into a sin.

“Hello. It's Eilidh, isn't it? I'm Constable Ann McPherson. I hear you want to help us.”

Ann was an old friend; her tall strong healthy face reminded Rob that she was once the school sport's champion. And he admired the way she sat by Eilidh, putting herself at Eilidh's level, smiling as though they were old school chums who hadn't seen each other in ages.

“I want to help.” The eagerness in the voice, the way Eilidh looked earnestly at Ann, mesmerized Rob.
What a little liar.
It shook his faith in his ability to read people.
She had me completely fooled.

“It was nothing to do with me,” Eilidh was confiding in Ann as though they were best friends, “and I'll help you all I can.” The confidence was back; but she could tell lies upon lies and wriggle and squirm and flash her beautiful eyes and toss her beautiful hair and Ann McPherson would see through it all.

Poor Eilidh,
Rob couldn't help thinking,
she's no idea how much trouble she's in.
But he couldn't forgive her. “I'm sorry, I have to go,” he said.

“You'll still be my boyfriend?” Her eyes were huge and, for the first time, Rob thought, slightly mad.

“I have a deadline,” he lied.

“I'll call you later.” She smiled up at him, waving that little finger wave that he used to find charming.

It took him a huge effort not to run from the room.

*  *  *  

When Rob walked into the office, Joanne was at the reporters' table. McAllister joined them and asked, “Rob, you okay?”

“For the first time in my life I understand why people drink whisky.”

The bravado in his voice did not fool them. From the color of his face, pale grey; from his fingers silently tapping out the story
on the table as he told them what had happened; from the way his eyes would occasionally look towards Mrs. Smart's empty seat at the head of the table as though he was filling her in on the story, they knew he was shocked to his core.

When he finished, McAllister was silent, but they could see his anger building as clearly as storm clouds gathering.

Joanne let out a huge sigh. “Unbelievable.” She shook her head. “She seemed such a nice girl.” Another sigh. “What will happen now?”

“I don't know.” Rob meant it. The fragility in Eilidh had made it hard for him to credit she could be so involved in a murder. But the something else that he couldn't put a name to—the tough, brazen way she would flirt, the promiscuous disregard for people, having so little concern over the fate of Don McLeod, and no remorse for her complicity in the death of Joyce McLeod nee Mackenzie—shocked him to the point of disbelief.
This was the girl I've slept with,
he kept thinking.

“It's her word against Sergeant Major Smart, so, who will a jury believe?” Rob stretched and sighed. He was drained, and it was only three o'clock in the afternoon. “Don is the betting man, but I'd say the odds were even.”

“Fifty-fifty—aye, I'd say that's about right.” McAllister stood and without another word, he left.

When they were alone, Joanne asked, “Did you know that Neil has left?”

“What do you mean?”

“He's gone. Took the early train.”

“But he didn't say good-bye . . . ” Rob saw she was beyond tears. She looked so sad, so . . . older was what he saw. “I'm sorry, Joanne.”

“Me too.” Then she realized—“Does this mean Don will be back?”

“Hope so.” Rob knew that Joanne did not want to talk about Neil. But he needed to know. “Neil was here for a reason,” he started.

“To do research for his book.”

“I had a feeling there was something more . . . ”

“To seduce a Highland lassie? To break her heart? To murder old ladies?” Joanne slapped her hand over her mouth. “I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that.”

“I know. You're hurt.” He wished he could help her but he too was feeling let down by Neil Stewart's sudden disappearance. “Anyway, it was Sergeant Major Smart that killed Mrs. . . . ”

“Mrs. Donal McLeod.” Joanne supplied the name. “It's pretty unbelievable, isn't it?”

“Did you know Neil was adopted?”

“He told me. He told me about his childhood, and the woman he called his mother. He loved her.”

“So maybe he was here to find his real mother.”

“Rob, I'm past caring what Neil was here for. He's gone and . . . ”

The ringing of the phone interrupted her, but she ignored it.

Rob was watching her as she struggled to hide her loss, her guilt, her anger at her self-deception.

The phone stopped for five seconds, then started again.

Rob answered. “
Gazette
.” He listened. “Not again!” he hung up. “It's McAllister. He's gone to confront Sergeant Major Smart.”

“The police should be there by now to arrest the sergeant . . . ” Joanne was speaking to herself and to the sound of Rob running down the stairs.

Left alone, the shame of what she had done to McAllister—and of what she had lost—surfaced again; deep down, burning dark, red-hot waves of shame washed through her, momentarily paralyzing her.

McAllister. How do I face him?
Just looking into his eyes was impossible.

I'll have to resign
. The thought of being without her sole source of pride—and income—dismayed her.

I love my job.
She was proud to say she was a reporter on the
Gazette.
It made her somebody.

She saw it was time to leave for home, to see to her children, to prepare supper, to take in the washing that had been on the line since yesterday morning because last night she couldn't summon up the energy to take it in and make a start on the ironing. There was little food in the house either; the effort to shop, to cook, to eat, to smile was beyond her.

She waited another five minutes in case McAllister and Rob returned, then gave up.
I'll find out in the morning,
she thought as she put on her coat.

As she cycled through the early dark, all she could think, again and again, was,
McAllister, I betrayed you. How can we ever be friends again?

With McAllister, she could be herself. She never felt nervous—
not like I did with Neil.

It came to her as she cycled under the heavy elms at the end of her lane.

Now I understand what Bill felt all these years; I made him feel the way that Neil made me feel—never quite good enough.

But McAllister? He listens, he likes me as I am.

The magnitude of her loss was beginning to sink in.

R
ob had heard the editor haring down the stairs but thought nothing of it. He was not noted for the second sight, he left that to Jenny McPhee, but suddenly he knew where McAllister was going.

He jumped on his bike and drove down to the river. No sign of McAllister.
He must have taken the footpath.
He drove up onto the path, scaring a woman pushing a pram.

He went slowly, not sure which mansion was which from the riverside view. He saw an open garden gate. He jumped off the bike and ran in.

“Hello.” Beech was standing in the garden looking at the next-door house, the one belonging to the sergeant major.

“Have you seen McAllister?”

“I saw him climbing over the wall to next door . . . I'm concerned there may be trouble.”

Rob did not tell him that Eilidh had accused the sergeant major of killing Joyce. Nor did he say that McAllister knew this—the explanation would take too long. Plus, he was busy examining the wall.

The moss had been ripped away from the stone. There were plenty of toeholds and a soft landing in a flower bed. He took a short run, hauled himself up and over, landed in soft earth, then snuck up on the open French doors and the loud voices, until he was sheltered in the doorway and hidden by curtains billowing out in the river breeze. He was surprised to see the former
soldier standing straight and tall and confident of his artificial legs, the wheelchair nowhere to be seen.

“I'm calling the police,” Sergeant Major Smart shouted.

McAllister was less than four feet in front of him, facing him, staring at him, defiant but absolutely still. “Go ahead,” he said. “Call them.”

Smart made a slight movement. Rob caught a glint on metal in the mirror above the fireplace. A gun was aimed at McAllister—a big, heavy, old, unreliable sort of gun, to Rob's untrained eye.

“You say I killed her.” Smart was angry in the cold calm way of a man with a gun who knows how to use it. “Where's your proof, eh? You've none.”

“Eilidh is making a statement to the police as we speak.”

“That trollop! She's lying. Who'd take her word against mine?”

“I would.”

“And if I shot you, who'd convict me, a wounded war hero, who mistook you for a burglar—”

When asked to recount what happened next, Rob couldn't, not clearly. All he remembered was the bang. It was so loud his ears were ringing. He felt the windowpane next to him shatter. There was a flurry of movement, too fast for him to see clearly. The rain of sharp needles on his skull, the noise in his ears, the fear he might be deaf, and the terror of losing control of his bowels made him stagger into the room. He leaned against the wall but slid down to the sitting room floor, where he stayed, unable to move, unable to comprehend if he was injured or not. He saw McAllister slumped in an armchair, unhurt, but looking like Banquo's Ghost.

It seemed to Rob that the banshee shriek that followed or preceded or came at the same time as the shot—for he could not be sure—had come from some unearthly creature.

Whether the scream came from Smart or McAllister—McAllister later denied it was him but he wasn't certain, or from Smart as he fell, or from Bahadur as he launched himself on the sergeant's back, one arm around his throat, the other with a knife to his ribs—Rob couldn't say.

Later, Rob decided the shriek had definitely come from Bahadur. “A Nepali war cry,” he described it to Joanne. “Absolutely bloodcurdling.”

He looked at the tableau of Sergeant Major Smart lying on his stomach, not daring to move, Bahadur sitting on the soldier's back, one arm around the man's neck, and in the other hand a long thin knife, the business end resting lightly on Smart's jugular vein. It must have penetrated the skin, but only slightly; a thin trickle of blood, no more than a shaving cut, had erupted, but the smell of blood, the scent of bloodlust, the discharge from the gun filled the room. When he realized Sergeant Major Smart was going nowhere, Rob was so relieved, he laughed loudly. Then stopped abruptly.

McAllister understood and gave his junior reporter a grin that made Rob think of a skeleton.
Which he may well have been if not for the Gurkha.

“What's going on?” Beech rushed in and stood beside Rob, legs akimbo, pointing an old double-barrel shotgun, kept for deer hunting, into the room.

“Good grief, man! Put that away!” McAllister yelled. “You're terrifying the life out of me.”

Pointing at Bahadur, who had managed to remove Sergeant Major Smart's legs without letting go of his stranglehold, nor removing the knife from Smart's neck, McAllister said, “Our savior.”

“Well-done, Mr. Bahadur!” Beech called out. He cocked the shotgun and saluted the former Gurkha commando, who for once did not return a salute from an officer.

Rosemary Sokolov appeared, looked around, said nothing—she'd seen worse in Shanghai—went towards Rob, examined his forehead, saw the bleeding had slowed down, and told him, “The police and an ambulance are on their way.”

“A doctor will do me,” Rob said. “I'm not up to hospital and the sight of a nurse.”

What Rob most remembered, when he and McAllister talked it over later, was that once the initial terror was over, he had been really annoyed: picking glass out of his hair; dabbing with the end of a curtain at the blood running down his forehead; seeing the pockmarks in his pride and joy, his Marlon Brando bike jacket.

Then, he remembered, he became more than annoyed—he was furious. “I'm going to be a television star one day, so if I have scars on my face, I'll kill you,” Rob had yelled at the now trussed-up soldier still lying on the floor, Bahadur on one side, Beech on the other, Smart's artificial legs well out of his reach. How that had happened Rob had no idea. But he guessed it was Bahadur's doing.

McAllister, his hand shaking as he desperately tried to light a cigarette, missing the end of it at least three times before succeeding, had said, the accent pure Glasgow, “Television star! That'll be right.”